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Dessert

Coooanut Pie

A puff pastry pie with coconut custard and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Coooanut Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line a pie plate with the puff pastry.

  2. Grate the coconut and reserve the milk.

Make the filling

  1. Cream the butter, then add powdered sugar, beaten egg yolks, lemon peel, brandy, and coconut milk.

  2. Mix in the grated coconut.

  3. Pour the mixture into the pie crust and bake until set.

Top and brown

  1. Make a meringue by beating the egg whites with powdered sugar until stiff.

  2. Spread the meringue on top of the baked pie.

  3. Return the pie to the oven for 1 minute to brown the meringue.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Coconut + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set into a rich, smooth custard.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff meringue that gives a light, airy topping.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the filling a tender texture.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the batter and adds sweetness to the filling and meringue.
Coconut
Adds moisture, flavor and chewy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Return the pie to the oven for 1 minute to brown the meringue. Meringue can go from golden to scorched in moments, so watch it closely. The sugar in the meringue browns quickly under heat, and a short bake is usually enough to color the peaks without overcooking the filling beneath.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coconut, milk, butter, sugar, egg, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coconut, milk, butter, sugar, egg, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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